The following material is excerpted from American
Painting: The Twentieth Century by Barbara Rose (distributed in the
U.S. by The World Publishing Company, 1970):

Isolation per se is the dominant theme of Edward Hopper's work. But
Hopper [1882-1967] is a sufficiently profound artist to have been able to
generalize the sense of loneliness and alienation felt by many Americans
into a universal theme. Unlike the magic realists, Regionalists and
American Scene painters, Hopper did not attempt to revive the techniques
of past epochs like the Renaissance or the Baroque; instead he set his
mind to developing a severe laconic style compatible with his homely
imagery and content. Like the magic realists, however, Hopper often casts
a chill over his figures, frozen as if for eternity in their rigid fixed
poses. . . . Hopper, unlike the majority of American realists of the
thirties, would not compromise with the sentimental. His lonely office
workers, aging couples and desolate filling stations speak of the
depressing banality of the democratic experience; but they do so with a
poignancy and compassion that elevate their subjects to dimensions far
beyond their petty sufferings.

"Gas," 1940
oil on canvas, 26" x 40"
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Hopper's painterly style, in which broad masses of light and shadow are
juxtaposed to create a firmly constructed world of solid, massive shapes,
distinguishes him as an outstanding American painter. His modest pictures,
in renouncing any claim to the heroic, nonetheless create a very stable
and permanent world. In Hopper's treatment of banality, there is . . . a
real feeling for the ordinary working people who eat in cafeterias and
all-night snack shops and live in furnished hotel rooms, whose life is
brightened by no great moments or dramatic climaxes, a genuine empathy for
those who find their few moments of comfort or amusement sunning
themselves on simple porches or taking in a movie. Even an empty room for
Hopper can be a theme pregnant with meaning. In Hopper's painting, the
American Scene at last achieves dignity and relevance to the human
condition in general.

Hopper was, like all the best American artists of the twentieth
century, acutely aware of the standard set by French art, but he was also
committed to making a statement about America. Surely his art owes a debt
to Manet, although he far preferred Eakins' art to that of any Frenchman.
As a young man, Hopper had made several trips to Europe, but he recalled
that when he was in Paris in 1906, he for the first time had heard of
Gertrude Stein, but not of Picasso. After painting a series of pointillist
pictures, he gave up what he deemed to be a French style. By the time he
exhibited Sailing, a solidly constructed painting of a yacht, however, in
the Armory Show, he was a committed realist, devoted to the reconstruction
of the natural world through formal intelligence. "The question of
nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable," Hopper wrote in the
introduction to the catalogue of his 1933 retrospective at the Museum of
Modern Art. Maintaining that "A nation's art is greatest when it most
reflects the character of its people," he called for an end of the
domination of American art by French art, which he felt was like the
subservient relationship of Roman art to Greek culture. "If an
apprenticeship to a master has been necessary," he announced, "I think we
have served it. Any further relation of such a character can only mean
humiliation to us. After all, we are not French and never can be and any
attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon
ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon surface."